Ryuukou Yanagi
Ryuukou Yanagi (柳 龍光, Yanagi Ryūkō) is a fictional character from anime and manga series of Baki. He is known as "Yanagi the Poisoner" (猛毒柳, Mōdoku Yanagi). Personality In his debut, Yanagi seemed to be a very stoic person, but then it turned out he likes to use psychological games during his battles. He behaves towards his prey like a cat toying with a mouse. Yanagi often asks his victim if they know what the world's most poisonous gas is, before he uses his techniques on them. He is also a very proud and stubborn person. Even after getting his leg impaled and his poisonous right hand cut off in a crushing defeat by Izou Motobe, he refuses to give up or just admit his defeat. Yanagi also showed to be quite brave; for example when he told Yujiro Hanma after his fight with Motobe, that the one who decides who wins or loses a match is not him (of course, Yanagi acknowledges that he's the strongest creature in the world). But that would of course lead to Yujiro to brutally and nearly kill Yanagi with one move. His mental toughness is extraordinary. He did a very painful procedure of dipping his right hand into a mixture of extremely lethal poisons, infusing it with his hand to make it capable of transmitting the lethal poisons on his opponents when he strikes them with it in battle. It proves that he can do a lot for his fighting path. He is also proud of his country's tradition. When he was asked by Mitsunari Tokugawa why he came to the Underground Arena, Yanagi responded that anyone in Japan who lives by Bushido knows about that colloseum. His pride is also seen in his fight against Hector Doyle, another one of the five death row convicts. After blinding him by a punch in the eye with his Poison Hand and putting him in a tight spot, Yanagi pulled out a katana and said that in Japan any samurai that lost their pride had their head chopped off, claiming that Doyle has lost his pride as well. This was a reference to how Doyle admitted defeat and became friends with Katsumi Orochi despite being a death row convict. Yanagi attempts to cut off Doyle's head shortly after he does his speech, but Doyle blocks it with his arm and escapes by throwing himself into the ocean. Appearance He is a short middle aged Japanese man with a muscular build and black hair that's slighty turning grey with age. He always bears a somewhat melancholic look on his face. He wears the typical clothes given to all prisoners in Tokyo, with the exception of his pants, which are beige colored instead of black. History Past Yanagi was a student of Kunimatsu. He was eventually imprisoned for unknown circumstances, while in prison he used his fellow inmates to practice the vacuum palm technique that's what got him the death penalty before he escaped. Revenge Tokyo In Itagaki's retconned oneshot Revenge Tokyo!! while he's back in imprisoned he manage to survive with only half of his face missing and his right hand replaced with prostetic hook after it's been cut off by Motobe. When a group of prison guards who are suppose to escort Yanagi to a mental facility — one of the prison guards proceeds to provoke Yanagi by taunting him which proves to be a fatal mistake who then proceeds to gruesomely massacre the entire escort before escaping confinement. Abilities The smallest of the convicts physically, he is later being shown as the most deadly. He is the only convict whose crime is known, that he killed a dozen men in prison as a test bed for his new skill. He uses a special martial art called Way of the Void (空道, Kōdō). In this style he practices Vacuum Palm, Whip Strike, Poison Hand and many others. Yanagi is also very good at using weapons, such as a rope sickle during fight with Baki Hanma, or the Bagh Nakh during fight with Goki Shibukawa. He also used a katana to cut Hector Doyle's head off, and he nearly destroyed his arm with this blade. His skill in the Way of the Void is so great that his master Kunimatsu considers him his most skilled student, despite having many students from all around the world, and calls him a genius. By human standards, however, he is strong and skilled as his weight lifting training his so extreme it ruined his molars. With his Vacuum Palm technique, he can knockout his opponent with oxygen, or rather lack thereof. His palm allows him to vacuum out oxygen from the air that his opponent breathes by smacking it onto their face. The testament of his mastery in manipulating air and human body however, was fully shown during the prison break in his debut chapter. Yanagi killed a warden with a reverse variant of his Vacuum Palm technique, by blowing air directly into a warden's ear which then proceed to gruesomely ejected his entire brain matter out. He can make his body as fluid as a liquid to enable it to act as a whip, letting him stretch and flex his limbs like such for devastating slaps. It's so powerful that it can easily tear off an opponent's skin and expose their musculature. After using it on Baki during their rematch though, Baki tells him that Yujiro also taught him that technique as a child, easily recalling how it's done and doing it right back at him. Unlike Baki, Yanagi actually does feel the immense pain the technique causes. Despite his skills, Motobe points out that his reliance on weaponry has weakened his fighter's senses. Furthermore, his reliance on the Poison Hand also turned out to be a big weakness as Motobe managed to chop his right hand off and then defeat him. Techniques *Vacuum Palm - Yanagi creates an air vacuum in the palm of his hand. He primary uses this technique to knock someone unconsious by sending an improper oxygen level into their lungs. *Whip Strike - Yanagi makes his limbs go fluid-like and then proceeds to "slap" his opponent mercilessly. The slaps are strong enough to rip the victims skin off. *Poison Hand - after undergoing a special ritual, Yanagi's right hand is deadly poisonous. Gallery Yanagi.png|Ryuukou Yanagi in the manga. Baki new ova34.jpg|Ryuukou Yanagi in the OAD. Yanagi render 2018.jpg|Ryuukou Yanagi 3rd season render. Yanagi 2018 e e.png|Ryuukou Yanagi in the third season. Category:Characters Category:Male Category:Way of the Void users Category:Japanese characters